If destructive criticism, in their meaning, is criticism which pulls down without building up in return, three-fourths of the best dramatic criticism written since the time of Boileau, fully filling the definition, is worthless. One can’t cure a yellow fever patient by pointing out to him that he should have caught the measles. One can’t improve the sanitary condition of a neighbourhood merely by giving the outhouse a different coat of paint. The foe of destructive criticism is the pro-German of American art. Our native criticism suffers further from the commercial Puritanism of its mediums. What is often mistaken for the Puritanism of the critic is actually the commercial Puritanism forced upon him by the owner and publisher of the journal in which his writings appear, and upon which he has to depend for a livelihood. Although this owner and publisher is often not personally the Puritan, he is yet shrewdly aware that the readers of his journal are, and out of this awareness he becomes what may be termed a circulation blue-nose. Since circulation and advertising revenue are twins, he must see to it that the sensibilities of the former are not offended. And his circumspection, conveyed to the critic by the copy reader or perhaps only sensed, brings about the Puritan play-acting by the critic. This accounts to no little degree for the hostile and uncritical reviews of even the most finished risqué farces, and of the best efforts of American and European playwrights to depict truthfully and fairly the more unpleasant phases of sex. “I agree with you that this last naughty farce of Avery Hopwood’s is awfully funny stuff,” a New York newspaper reviewer once said to me; “I laughed at it until my ribs ached; but I don’t dare write as much. One can’t praise such things in a paper with the kind of circulation that ours has.” It is criticism bred from this commercial Puritanism that has held back farce writing in America, and I venture to say much serious dramatic writing as well. The best farce of a Guitry or a Dieudonné, produced in America today without childish excisions, would receive unfavourable notices from nine newspapers out of ten. The best sex drama of a Porto-Riche or a Wedekind would suffer--indeed, already has suffered--a similar fate. I predicted to Eugene O’Neill, the moment I laid down the manuscript of his pathological play “Diff’rent,” the exact manner in which, two months later, the axes fell upon him.